Jerry Coughlan has the wheel thing

Thursday

May 10, 2007 at 12:01 AMMay 10, 2007 at 10:16 AM

After 21 years in investment banking, Jerry Coughlan decided to take a break. The Wellesley resident left his job on Wall Street at the end of last year to take a step back, spend more time with his family and do the things he wanted to do.

Samantha Fields

After 21 years in investment banking, Jerry Coughlan decided to take a break. The Wellesley resident left his job on Wall Street at the end of last year to take a step back, spend more time with his family and do the things he wanted to do.

For Coughlan, 50, a “serial Pan-Mass Challenge rider” who is also on the board of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, that included making more time for community service. On May 15, he will set out on his bicycle to ride across the country — from Anacortes, Wash., to Kennebunk, Maine — a journey that he hopes will raise a million dollars, to be split between the Jimmy Fund and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.

Over the course of approximately seven weeks, Coughlan said he expects to ride about 3,300 miles, with his daughter Kelley, 19, and her friends, Alexandra Abbott, 20, and Alex Von Oech, 22, caravanning along with him in a rented RV. The three are also planning to take turns cycling with him, he said, on and off throughout the trip.

Coughlan’s decision to ride across the country was inspired by his brother-in-law, Henry Stifel, who has been a quadriplegic since 1982. “When he was 17, he was injured in a car accident,” Coughlan said. “And for 25 years he’s lived in a chair, with very limited mobility. He’s a very inspirational guy, who woke up one day and his life was completely changed. He didn’t go the self-pity route, which would be so easy to do.” Instead, Stifel serves as the vice chairman of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, which is dedicated to curing spinal cord injury and, in the meantime, improving the quality of life for people living with paralysis.

“It’s great to raise money and do something totally different,” Coughlan said of his cross-country ride. “[Henry] rolls, so the whole riding thing had some synchronicity for me.”

Coughlan has already raised $100,000, the first $25,000 of which he put up himself. “I’ve learned that the trick to fundraising is to put your money where your mouth is,” he said. “Then you don’t have to feel bad about asking other people for money. … I’ve done a massive outreach campaign through my network of friends and colleagues, to let them know what I am doing.”

In addition, he contacted people and organizations along his cross-country route who have received quality-of-life grants from the Reeve Foundation, to tell them about the trip. Several have agreed to hold benefit events for him in their respective cities and towns when he reaches them, to raise money and awareness. “Spinal cord injuries are very random events,” Coughlan said. “There is no specific place where there’s a large concentration of people with [similar injuries, which is why] I am hoping to have minor events along the way.”

Coughlan said he was partly inspired to ride this year because it is the 25th anniversary of Stifel’s injury. For a man whose life has been so challenging, he said, Stifel’s overall sentiment is that “his life is so positive in so many ways.”

Next Monday, Coughlan will fly to Seattle, where he will be reunited with his bike (which is being FedExed), meet up with his daughter and her friends, and plan the first day of his ride. He admits that he is “a little anxious and nervous about doing it,” but excited too. “Henry’s going to come out at some point in the Midwest … to hopefully roll with us,” as are Coughlan’s two sons, Ian, 17, and Christopher, 10. Stifel, who travels by van, will also meet up with Coughlan in New England, “and caravan with us at the end,” which he expects to be on or around the 4th of July.

To learn more about Jerry’s ride, and to follow him along the way, visit http://hrjr07.org/.